


Norna Dómr

by prodigy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:54:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prodigy/pseuds/prodigy
Summary: There was a difference, their tutor always maintained, between things that lied and things that changed their shape.





	Norna Dómr

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dreamkist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamkist/gifts).



There was a difference, their tutor always maintained, between things that lied and things that changed their shape. For one deceived the eyes, or the ears, and the other deceived all things known to the heart; one was the work of a sorcerer, the other the work of a witch. Thor hardly paid attention. The bestiaries never interested him unless they contained beasts at which he could marvel, or fantasize about besting; there was nothing tangible in the theories of magic, nothing he could shape (as a boy) into a story which positioned himself as the hero.

Loki must have taken a quiet interest, but Thor did not remember it--looking back, pained, he could not remember it, any more than he could remember the first words or steps he'd taken; he only remembered a later time, when he came sprinting in to show something to Mother and found her teaching Loki his first spell. He knew very well--later--that he could populate the pages of a book with the things he had forgotten about his brother. But for some reason, he remembered the lesson.

 _What does it matter?_ he had said, boastfully. _Mother is not a witch. And Father is the greatest magician in the Nine Realms. He could slay any deceiver._

What had Loki said, or done, then? Perhaps he'd looked away, inscrutable: though Thor had not seen his brother as inscrutable at the time. To think of him as unknowable would have meant thinking there was something more to know. Perhaps he'd asked a question too. He'd had a number of questions, as a boy. Thor might have spoken over him.

He did remember one of the tutor's responses, colored with amusement: amusement at what? Maybe the blind assertion that Odin was a greater magician than Frigga, or something else--in either case, she'd said, _Your mother and your father are great and powerful. But you will not always be under their aegis, will you, Thor Odinson?_

 _No!_ Thor had grinned. _I will be king._

Maybe Loki had already turned the page and been reading ahead, characteristically. He had always been far ahead in lessons. But Thor didn't know. That was a memory no one had any more except for, perhaps, Loki; and Loki would not give it up to him.

* * *

Chains looked ill on Loki, and weighed heavily; nevertheless, he stood straight. Thor had the grim thought that he stood straighter nowadays than he ever had before--defiance, Thor supposed, but maybe something in addition. Certainly he'd never cowered: he was a prince of Asgard. But he had been given to retreat, to making himself slight. The pretense was gone, and in its place another pretense.

He tilted his chin up to regard Thor when his mask came off: and he said, immediately, "Was that better, brother? Did it satisfy?"

The truth was that the words rankled. Almost everything that Loki said did, just as Loki aimed to; but there was no use in letting him know that. Thor glanced away, at the guards, and wondered what they would do if Loki attempted something. Theoretically there was nothing he could attempt--the chains bound him, at every level--but theory had never served Thor well, and certainly not in understanding or predicting Loki. He readied himself, again, to fight him. That was easier.

Loki glanced at the Asgardian sky; "What were they afraid of?" he said. "Your friends? I suppose on Midgard they still imagine that magic comes with incantations? I can imagine that was a comforting thought; I suppose you didn't disabuse them?"

They crossed the Bifrost, Loki at a staggered pace in his bonds. He was lightfooted and airy; Thor imagined if he put his fingers to Loki's pulse, he would still find it fluttering in fear. Then he was seized by the impulse to do so. _Lie if you want, brother; your beating heart cannot._

But what did he know of Loki any more? Maybe it could.

"Was it rewarding to see me like this?" Loki questioned. "Did it please you? Or perhaps you were merely glad to have me silent. You never did like the things I had to say."

Thor dug his fingernails into his palm, and walked, and tried to think of anything else. He had never mastered the trick.

* * *

His memory wasn't so much riddled with gaps as it was merely nonpresent where it was nonpresent: and the same was true of his perception. There were some things he simply did not perceive; some things which must have had beginnings, but only came into being in his world when he noticed them.

He noticed the flush of his brother's skin when he was angry, or agitated--at least in Asgard Loki was pale, and rosy, and prone to taking a bruise. He noticed his brother's eyes--perhaps more incapable of lying than the rest of him, or perhaps that was Thor's fantasy. More than anything he noticed the things that Loki did.

Or perhaps he invented them. He knew that about memory, too.

When they came to be too much, he pinned Loki to the wall and kissed him: and Loki opened his mouth, and let him, and kissed back, and Thor was too far gone to question it. He didn't think when he stripped him unceremoniously; he didn't think when he took him, forcefully and desperately, and Loki screamed and clawed at the marble of the floor. He didn't even think when he held him, afterward; but thinking crept in eventually, and he wondered what he could possibly say.

"Do you think you've wronged me?" was Loki's eventual response, prescient as always. "Is that it?"

Thor was silent; then he said, wearily, "I've wronged you immeasurably, Loki. I don't know that I could discern a further charge."

Something in that shifted Loki's breathing, but Thor couldn't say what; and Loki looked away.

* * *

He had him yet one more time in his bedchamber on the ark, under the curved ceilings and the chrome and the lights; and after he was done Loki tried to squirm out of his grasp. Exhausted, Thor was of half a mind to let him--but there was something in Loki's expression that gave him pause, and he didn't let up. Loki didn't struggle, this time; he merely lay underneath him and stared hatefully up at him. As he did, he changed--cool and bluish where he'd been pallid and flushed, marked where he'd been unmarred.

"This is me," he said to Thor, breathless and tired. "Is this what you wish to capture? Something that deceives you at every turn?"

"You have not deceived me, Loki."

An incredulous laugh--"Of all the foolish things--I don't know what you mean."

"You have not deceived me." The words were difficult to say. "There are just some things that I've failed to see." And this time Loki did try to rise, to escape, to leave; but Thor held fast, and eventually he quieted, and Thor put his hand to his throat to discern the beating of his heart.


End file.
